Frog

5. Frog Fears

His daughter’s asleep upstairs, his wife’s out. After his wife left he got his daughter to sleep by giving her a bath (very brief; small portable plastic tub in the kitchen into which he poured three parts hot water to two parts cold), reading to her for about fifteen minutes, then in the dark telling her another part of the “Mickey and Donald Go Fishing” story he’s been making up for her just about every other night for the past year, and finally singing a few nursery rhymes in a low voice to his own impromptu tunes. His wife went to a movie in the nearest big town from here. Seventeen miles along mostly curvy country roads. She wanted him to go with her, he would have but not enthusiastically (doesn’t especially like movies, and especially in theaters and in the evening when he has to drive a good ways to one), but they couldn’t get a babysitter. “You go,” she said. “No, you go, since you’re really the one who wants to.” A new Russian movie she’s been eager to see since they saw the trailer of it in a Manhattan theater last year and she read a couple of reviews. Being shown in the town hall meeting room, on hard fold-up chairs, so not the most comfortable place to see a relatively long and, from what the trailer suggested and she told him the reviews said, slow, dark, dense movie. About two-and-a-half hours. That’s what someone at the town hall said tonight when she called up about it. It’s been almost an hour since she said she’d be home. The movie might have started late. The organizer of the event, Denise has said, tends to wait till the last possible customer has bought his ticket, decided if he wants anything at the refreshment table, sat down and taken off his sweater or shawl and hung it over the back of the chair, before she starts the movie. The single showing of the only movie being shown in that town this week, other than a nature movie at the library, let’s say. There’s no real movie theater there. White Hill. The nearest real theater (marquee, box office, refreshment stand and soft movie seats), which shows a movie two to three times a day on weekends, is in an even larger town twenty-one miles past White Hill. Elksford. It’s twelve on the dot now. Takes a half-hour to drive back from White Hill under normal driving conditions. There may be a thick fog on the road and she’s driving very slowly. The route from their village to about five miles from White Hill is along a peninsula. Or even stopped for a while when the driving became too hazardous for her because of the fog. He’s never seen a movie in that hall. She’s been to two this summer, both times with a friend of theirs who couldn’t go tonight, and came back around when she said she would. He did see one in the Elksford theater, only because she’d wanted to see it even more than this one and he didn’t want her driving that far alone at night or even walking back to her car after the movie was over. Elksford’s about ten miles from a national park and can get rowdy at night. Motorcycles; campers filling up on food, booze and gas and getting drunk or high. White Hill has no bars or stores open past nine. Only times he’s been inside the town hall have been in the basement once a summer for the last few years when they take their cats there for their annual shots. Cheaper and easier than in New York. An Elksford vet who sets up a clinic every Monday night. Even puts a desk nameplate out, probably so the pet owners can spell his name right on their checks. Dr. Hugh van Houtensack or von Hautensack. There have been accidents on the roads around here because of the fog, most of them early morning or late at night. He reads about them happening every other week or so in the local weekly. One man lost a leg last summer. In a rented car, visiting his daughter and son-in-law for a few days, so probably wasn’t familiar with the area and also might not have known how to drive in fog. Denise knows the roads and what to do with the headlights in fog. She’s more than seven months pregnant. Maybe she shouldn’t have been driving. Her stomach’s already pressed up against the steering wheel. If she pushes the seat back any farther she can’t reach the floor pedals. Maybe she suddenly got labor pains or false labor pains she took for the real ones and went to the White Hill hospital. Should he call? His daughter snores upstairs. She sleeps in a crib in the one room upstairs, their own bed behind a screen. Don’t call. Denise knows the difference between the two pains, and he’s sure she’d try to call him before she went to a hospital, but definitely have someone at the hospital call him once she got there. Maybe she met someone she knows at the movie and they talked after, wanted to continue the talk so went for coffee or ice cream at the sandwich and ice cream shop a couple of miles past White Hill. She would have called, from the town hall if it had a phone, but definitely from the shop. She might be driving along the secondary road to their private road right now. Or driving down the private road any second now. He’d see the headlights thirty seconds or so before she reached the house. My worries are over he’d say if he saw the lights now. He’d go outside to greet the car, open the door for her, help her out, kiss her and walk back to the house holding her shoulder and hand. The headlights would only be from her car. Maybe twice a summer someone’s driven down their road by mistake — none so far this summer, far as he knows — and for some reason almost always in the day. Not many people around here leave their grounds after dark. And so few unusual things happen around the cottage that he thinks they’ve always told one another when someone’s driven down their road by mistake. Olivia snores. Loves to see her sleep. He goes upstairs to see if she’s OK. He knows she is but goes upstairs just to do something but also, he just now thinks, to pull the covers back over her if they’ve slid off and to push her left leg back in if it’s sticking through the crib bars. That’s the one that recurrently comes out; the other side of the crib’s against the wall.

She’s OK, everything in place, in the same position, far as he can tell, she was in when he last looked in on her an hour ago. About an hour and fifteen minutes now. Nobody to call. The town hall, but he’s just about sure nobody’s there to answer. Looks outside the bedroom window that faces the front. Doesn’t seem to be any fog around. Bug light above the front door and the living room floor lamp he was sitting under give off enough light to tell. But the roads always get the fog worse than their house. Denise would also have called, if she was going anywhere but home after the movie, to make sure everything was all right with Olivia. Something’s wrong. He’s almost sure of it. There’s just no reason for her not to be home by now. He thinks that even if there was an accident on the road that prevented her car and others from going around it — on one of the two narrow bridges, for instance — she would have got the trooper to somehow call him or gone into someone’s home to call herself. No, that’s going too far — both those. Olivia stirs, turns her head over to the other side. She probably did that several times in the last hour, stuck her foot out of the crib and brought it under the covers too. He hopes she wakes up. He’d love to pick her up, wrap a baby blanket around her and hold her to him till she fell asleep again. Maybe singing to her; probably just quietly. Maybe she has to pee. She doesn’t wake up. He pulls the covers back, feels inside her diapers. Dry. If they were wet he’d go downstairs to run warm water over her washrag, change her in the crib.

He goes downstairs, sits in the living room chair under the lamp, picks up the book he’s been reading, stares outside. Mosquito buzzes his ear. He jerks his head back, looks around for it, sees it, holds his hand and the book out on either side of it and slaps. Got it, but nothing’s there when he looks at the book and his hand. Spreads his fingers wide, looks at his lap and the floor, stands and brushes off anything that may be on his chest. Doesn’t see how he could have missed it, since he didn’t see it fly away, but it’s sometimes happened. It’ll be back. He goes to the window. Private road leading to the secondary road roughly a quarter of a mile up the hill. Right on that road to the general store and main country road 2.3 miles away. Mosquito again, once around his head, and when he holds out his hands to slap it, though there’s much less light here, it darts away and seems to go up the fireplace chimney, but he’s lost it in a darker part of the room for a few seconds, so that could have been another one. Right on that road to White Hill. Movie’s probably been over an hour and three-quarters by now, longer if it started on time. So it’s been almost an hour and a half since she should have been home, and longer if she left the movie early because she didn’t like it, let’s say, or wasn’t feeling well. He can see only a few feet of road going up the hill. Can see some sky through the trees. A dark blue with a streak of bright light. Good. Must be a clear night and full moon or no more than a day before or after one. Better for driving. Some full-moon nights, which they don’t get the effect of in front of the house because of the tall trees, it’s almost as if streetlights lit the road. They usually say something about the moon when it’s full. Just that there is one and it looks nice over the bay from their deck and lights the path and garden behind the house as electric overhead lights would and maybe something about its face. But it’s rained or has been cloudy or misty the last three days. Slippery roads? No, they were dry this afternoon when they drove to the lake to swim, though some puddles on the road when the culverts under them must have got clogged. Denise, get home now, come on, will you? Oh shit, where is she? Way past midnight. She’s been tired lately because of the pregnancy. Quiet upstairs. Very quiet inside this room and around the house. Baby inside kicks hard now. It could have kicked so hard she lost control of the car for a few seconds and crashed. He should have gone with her. Of course he couldn’t. Then convinced her to stay home. “If the movie’s that good and been reviewed so much,” he should have said, “it’ll be coming around New York for the next year.” Some men could have stopped her car. The old trick of pulling alongside her car and pointing to the back wheel as if something were wrong with it — just the driver visible, the others lying on the seat or floor — and she should stop. He’s warned her about it, but a while ago, so she may have forgotten it or only remembered it once she got out of the car. Read about it happening to a woman in New York, another somewhere else, and that’s just what he’s read. They’d stop, if she did, and jump out after she stepped out to look at her wheel or just rolled down her window, and do who knows what to her. “I’m pregnant,” she could say and that might work with some of them but excite one of them even more. “You’ll kill the baby,” she could say and they could get so guilty or just want her out of the way so she can’t identify them that they’d kill her and dump her into a ditch along the road or drive into the woods along an old quarry or clammer’s road and dig a hole and bury her or cover her up with brush and leaves. It’s happened. It could happen. He hasn’t heard of it happening around here, but no area’s exempt, especially one with so many transients. Campers from the national park who were out for a good time and got carried away. Maybe it has happened around here, since he doesn’t know what’s in the local papers between Labor Day and July 1. He can’t hear any cicadas, or whatever are the summer’s last noise-making insects of that kind. Maybe the phone’s dead or off the hook. Goes into the kitchen and picks up the receiver. Working. He looks outside. No lights coming down the road. Thinks he heard something outside — an animal walking, or a person, or falling tree branch hitting the ground. He goes out the kitchen door and looks. Nothing. “Anybody here?” Holds his breath to listen. Not even car sounds from far off. If a car were approaching their road from either way, he’d be able to hear it from here even if it were a half-mile away. Thinks so. Or maybe just from the top of the road. Very few cars on it at this time. Maybe none. Maybe there won’t be one till five o’clock or so when the lobstermen drive past their road to the point a mile away. Who to call? No one. The phone’s ringing and he runs to the kitchen to get it. Olivia cries. Oh God, he thinks, what to do? “Mommy Mommy, Daddy,” she screams. Phone rings probably scared her. He picks it up. “Denise?” “No,” a woman says. “Is it something immediately urgent?” “Well…” “Anyway, please, whoever it is, hold for ten seconds — a minute at the most. I have to see about my daughter. OK?” “I guess.”

He runs upstairs. “Where’s Mommy? I want Mommy,” Olivia says. “She’ll be home very soon. She went to a movie. You knew; we told you. Listen, I have to get the phone downstairs. Someone’s on it. It’s very important. That’s what woke you up — the phone ringing. Stay here, sweetheart.” “No.” “I’ll be right back up.” She holds out her arms. “Carry me.” “I can’t. Stay in bed.” “Carry me downstairs. I don’t want to be here alone.” He picks her up, grabs a blanket out of the crib and throws it around her, goes downstairs, sits at the table with Olivia on his thigh, picks up the receiver and says “Excuse me, you still there?” “Yes,” the woman says. “Is this Mr. Tetch?” “What is it, my wife?” “I’m Officer Ragnet, state police. There’s been an auto accident and your wife’s been hurt.” “Is she seriously hurt?” “Yes, I’m sorry.”

That can’t have happened, he tells himself later. Impossible. Never, and he shakes it off. He’s sitting in the same chair. Olivia’s asleep upstairs. Denise shouldn’t have gone to the movie, period. He didn’t think it would be a good movie no matter what anyone said. The trailer they saw made it seem as if it would be a terrible movie, very slow paced, trite plot, too heavily acted, that’s what it’ll be, he remembers thinking then, and then, he thinks, telling her. “Derivative. The way the people are dressed and look. The background darkness. The long camera shots out into space. Bergman,” he said in the theater after the trailer was over. “All that rain.” He remembers a Bergman movie he’d seen that resembled the little they saw in the trailer. The listless way the people spoke and moved. Their depressed, estranged looks. “Bad Bergman, that’s what it’ll be,” he said after they left the theater. “Even the actors look as if they were picked because they look like some of the more well-known actors in the Bergman repertory company.” Olivia was with his mother-in-law. The movie they saw that afternoon was what? Funny to remember the trailer but not the movie it was with. All the movies they’ve seen together the last two-and-a-half years have been in the afternoon. That’s when his mother-in-law can take care of Olivia, or prefers to. Besides, they like to get Olivia to bed by eight so she’ll be asleep by nine. The movie only stayed around for a week, despite the good reviews. They thought it would be around for a month or two. He would have seen it with her. He likes going to movies with her when his mother-in-law takes care of Olivia. It seems the only time they’re out of the house alone together in New York. So far they haven’t got anyone else to babysit for them there. For a while they were reading about a number of babysitters in and out of New York who killed or mutilated or molested the children they sat, and it spooked them. They decided they’d only start hiring sitters when Olivia was clearly able to tell them if the sitter had done anything wrong to her or had left her alone in the apartment for even a minute or anything like that. His mother-in-law will only sit at her apartment, which would have meant, if she had agreed to sit for them at night, getting Olivia out of sleep to take her home. He likes walking out of his in-laws’ building with Denise, just after they’ve left Olivia there. And taking her hand and holding it all the way to the theater, even if they take a subway or bus, though most of the movie theaters they go to are in walking distance of his in laws’. Also holding her hand through the movie, kissing it a few times, pressing it to his cheek, maybe kissing her once or twice and whispering things to her he never seems to say anywhere else, other than at a party or some social gathering like a wedding when he’s a little tight, or in bed when he thinks he hasn’t said anything like that for a long time and maybe he should. Even waiting on the movie line with her is nice, except when it’s cold. Actually, when it’s very cold or raining they usually go to another theater that doesn’t have a long line. Most of the movie theaters near his in-laws’ are pretty good. If that movie had had a good New York run she wouldn’t have gone to see it tonight. Now that he thinks of it, the newspaper review she told him about was only so-so. The two magazine reviews she read parts of to him were ecstatic, but they came out after the movie was gone. The telephone call was a wrong number. The caller was very apologetic. Howard didn’t think anyone called anyone around here so late — long after midnight. Maybe it was silly to think that, but that’s what he thought. He wishes it were possible to think that and it had been a wrong number. Tonight’s a year after Denise was killed coming back from the movie. It was foggy. Year to the day. She lost control of the car, it seems, and she and the baby she was carrying died. He screamed “Oh nooo” when the officer on the phone told him. Olivia started crying upstairs. He didn’t know what to do, called friends and told them what had happened and if one of them could stay here with Olivia while the other drove him to the hospital where the police wanted him to identify Denise. He sits in the same chair he sat in that night. Almost to the minute a year ago when the officer called. He’s drinking brandy straight. He wants to get drunk. He is getting drunk. He raises his glass and says “Denise, my love, where in God’s name are you? Please come back,” and drinks. It’s actually the night she went to the movie. Almost one now. If there was fog or slow traffic in front of her — a tractor, but there wouldn’t be one on the road that late. So just someone in front of her driving very slowly — she still should have been home two hours ago. The fog slows you down fifteen minutes from White Hill, maybe a half-hour if it’s thick. Same with a slow driver no matter how slow. And then only if he’s going the whole way, White Hill to the country-road cutoff at their village, and she can’t pass him, something she doesn’t like to do, but does if he urges her to, on these roads even during the day. Anyway, her trip home, if it were one of those, would take no more than an hour and fifteen minutes at the most. He did hear the phone ring when he was outside before. He ran in. Olivia was crying. Phone rings must have woke her. He said into the receiver “Denise?” “No.” He told the woman to hold, his daughter was crying, and ran to the bedroom, brought Olivia downstairs, apologized to the woman for keeping her waiting and asked what she wanted. “Is this the Drickhoff residence?” “No, we share a party line. They’re four rings and we’re three.” “I’m almost positive I dialed right. How terrible at this hour.” “You had to have dialed right. I was outside when I heard the phone ring. I must have missed the first ring, so thought it was three I was hearing. Then I ran in and picked it up on the third ring of the second series, when there no doubt would have been a fourth. You see, I was anxious to pick up the phone — I thought it was my wife calling — that ‘Denise’ name I said before — that I answered it by mistake. Excuse me, but you’ll have to dial again. I hope you’re not calling from out of state.” “No, from Bellsport — not far.” “May I also say, because this is a party line and we hear the Drickhoff rings, that it might be a bit late to call?” “I know and I’m sorry. I wouldn’t call if I didn’t have to. But it is rather a little urgent, as I’m sure your wife’s call to you must be.” “That’s right. Look what I get for sticking my nose in. Excuse me. Good night.” Right after that the phone rings four times, twice. Maybe one of the Drickhoffs picked it up or the woman thought that was enough times to ring. He gave Olivia water, brought her upstairs, she said “Where’s Mommy?” he said she’ll be back soon, sang to her, she fell asleep in his arms and he put her down. He rolled the mosquito netting over her crib and went downstairs, poured a brandy, drank it quickly, poured another and sat in the living room chair and opened the book. Can’t read, he thought, and shut it and sipped the brandy while he stared out the window. A mosquito flew out of the fireplace. He watched it hover above his knee and then go across the room. Must be a male.

Flash of light outside. Lightning? No, sky was too clear before, but weather could have changed. He goes to the window. Headlights. Sounds of a car coming down the dirt road. He goes outside. Their car. She drives it as far forward as it can go without hitting the parking log, stops to shift it into reverse, sees him and waves. He holds up his hand. She backs into the parking space he cut out of the woods this summer. Hand brake, lights off and she steps out of the car as he comes around the front of it. “I was worried, where were you?” he says. “Say hello first, say hello.” “Hello. So?” “Grief, what a reception after so many hours. I tried to get you several times but our phone was always dead. There, now don’t you feel bad?” and she puts up her face and they kiss. “I was just on the phone — thirty minutes ago, and it was working.” “Who called so late? I hope not my father.” “Wrong number.” “Then it must have started working again around that time till up to an hour and a half ago, because that was the last time I tried to call.” “Actually, it was for the Drickhoffs. I picked it up impulsively, so could be our phone still isn’t working fully. We can worry about it tomorrow. But why were you so late in getting back?” “Can’t we go inside first? It’s getting cold for me.” They start for the house, his arm around her shoulder, other hand holding her hand. She looks straight up. “See any shooting stars tonight?” “I didn’t look.” “You didn’t even go on the deck for a minute? That’s all it would have taken. The first clear night in three and the best week for it.” “I was only interested in the front of the house — our car coming down and you driving it.” “I met Rick and Arlene at the movie and went for tea with them.” They go inside. “That’s what I tried to call you about.” “What place would be open now?” “Not now — before. Little past eleven. We got to the Frigate as it was closing. They didn’t mind us having coffee and tea — we also wanted desserts but they were all out — because they were cleaning up around us. They do unbelievably well there and have a good menu. We should go. Hire a babysitter a few days in advance and make it an early dinner.” “OK. But why a little past eleven? Why’d it take so long to get there, is what I mean? When did the movie end?” “At eleven.” “Why so late?” “Why so many questions?” “Because I was worried. I imagined all sorts of awful things happening to you.” “Maybe you wanted them to.” “That’s silly. Where’d that come from?” “I don’t know. Interrogating me. I did try calling you though.” “But when you couldn’t reach me, what did you think I’d think was happening to you?” “I thought you’d know everything was all right even if I didn’t call you. I just thought, well, that you’d at least wouldn’t get worried. Truth is, I thought you’d be asleep by now. That you’d read and have some wine and then get so tired from the rea ling and wine or maybe even television, that you’d go to sleep long before I came back. In other words, that you wouldn’t even be in a mental state to worry. It’s past one. What are you doing up? You usually get to sleep at ten — eleven, the latest.” “I was worried. Just never do it again, OK?” “What?” “If you can’t reach me, then come straight home.” “Why? If I can’t reach you and it’s getting to where I was expected back much earlier, check the phone to see if it’s working. If it isn’t, assume I’m trying to get you but can’t because the phone’s not working.” “I tried the phone. I just remembered. I got a dial tone.” “Probably long after I stopped trying to call you, right? Because you don’t think I’d call past twelve, do you? Not even past eleven-thirty. You’d be sleeping, I’d think. Or the Drickhoffs would, and the phone would wake them. I even asked the operator — you forgot to tell me something, I forgot to tell you this — and she said our connection wasn’t working. And since there were no reports of lines being down, to try again in fifteen minutes. Well, fifteen minutes was eleven forty-five, so I wasn’t going to try again. But that’s it, all right? How was Olivia?” “She woke up crying before — the Drickhoffs call — but it was quick. Gave her water, sang a song, she went back to sleep. Actually, I carried her downstairs because I had to get back to the caller; I’d asked her to hold so I could attend to Olivia.” “That person say why she called so late?” “She said ‘pretty urgent.’” “It should have been very urgent. Extremely. Anyway, I’m sorry for the confusion and that you worried so much. I am.” “I thought you had a car crash. I even imagined it. Worse, I saw myself alone with Olivia for the rest of my life. At least the next fifteen years of it, and the two of us always sad that you had died. That the fetus died also so late in its development made me sad too. I thought people would feel sorry for me. I saw myself at your funeral. I saw myself not teaching classes this fall. Just grieving, mourning, going a little crazy, but taking care of Olivia for the next year best as I could. Real self-pity. I don’t know why I went so far with these thoughts. That I’d never love any woman again as I did you. Like that. It’s possible I took some pleasure in all the attention I got — but real sadness. I actually sat here crying for about a minute over my imagined loss of you.” “Maybe it was from the drink over there. How many you have?” “That only came after I started thinking about it. Could be you’re right though. Brandy can do that.” “Brandy?” “I felt I needed something stiff to relax me. I even saw myself sitting here a year later drinking brandy from the same juice glass and staring out the window, remembering the night of the crash exactly a year before. Olivia was again upstairs. In my thoughts. I’d rented the cottage for the summer. Everyone said I shouldn’t. That it would bring up old stuff better left where it was, but I said it was my final farewell to you. Of my mourning. That I had to come back here to get through the next few years. That’s what I said, but I don’t quite know now what I meant. Olivia wanted to come back too. She liked it that the Hahn kids were just around the loop. I did too. And another practical reason: that it was the one place around here I could afford. Maybe I’m nuts for having gone so far in these thoughts, and the crying. What do you think?” “I think that I’m glad to be back. And that I didn’t die. Very glad of that. Also, that I probably shouldn’t go to movies alone at night. Anywhere far alone. It’s become too uncomfortable to drive, and what if the baby started? Oh, I could take care of that. But that if we go to White Hill or any long distance, for you to do all the driving from now on. That puts a big strain on you when we go back to New York, but what else can I do? I’ll be even bigger then.” “I definitely should have had more control over myself before. Thought what you said I should have. Such as picking up the phone around eleven or so, or anytime when it’s more than a half-hour after you said you’d be home. Next time I’ll do that.” “There won’t be a next time for months.” “With the next baby then.” “What next baby?” “Or if you change your mind one afternoon soon and go out alone and aren’t back a half-hour after you said you’d be.” “Wait, whoa. What’s with this next baby business? Not only that it came out of nowhere and doesn’t much relate to what we were talking about, but who’s having one?” “Don’t you want to have three?” “Only if I’m carrying twins, which I’m not.” “Maybe if it’s relatively easy having two, we’ll want to have another. We should leave it open. I’ve always wanted — imagined having — three.” “First time you’ve said that.” “I’m sure I have before. I love it when you’re pregnant. That’s not why I want three. I just love having one and know I’ll love, or very much think I will, having two, and want a third because I think if 11 be the right number for us and for the first two. They can play off one another, and other things.” “I don’t understand. Maybe it’s your brandy, or me. Anyway, it’s not something to think or talk seriously about now.” “You don’t want to have some brandy — can’t have any, right? Why do I ask? I know you can’t.” “Truth is, it’s probably late enough to. Just about all the damage that can be done to it has been done. Still, best to play safe. I’m going to get some milk.” She kisses him. “Somehow I really enjoy all the attention I didn’t know you were giving me before, morbid as it was. I just wish, my sweetie, it hadn’t hurt you so.” Kisses him again and goes to the kitchen. He follows her. “How was the movie?” he says.